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The 27 club.

I bet you’ve heard about “27 club”. This is the list of popular musicians who have died at age 27. Scientists have analyzed biographical information about these artists and found out that there’s no reason for this club further existence, and all these deaths look more like a coincidence. Artists die regularly at all ages. The thing is that hard work plus tours plus rock-n-roll lifestyle, which was so usual for all those artists, increase the risk of death tenfold.

To prove the lack of base for this theory, the Australian scientists decided to analyze it thoroughly. The lives of 1,046 musician who have been on the top of British music charts between 1956 and 2007 were tested. The musicians were not necessarily famous all over the world, but they anyway influenced the formation and development of such music styles as rock and blues. They found out that 71 (7%) of the musicians died at the age of 27. Not that much, isn’t it? But the mathematical analysis proved that musicians mostly die before 40. One more interesting fact was that in the 1970s and early 1980s the number the deaths of young musician between 20 and 30 was really very high.

The origins of the “27 club” should be also mentioned here. Jimmi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Alan Wilson and Jim Morrison died between 1969 and 1971. But the fact they all were of the same age wasn’t accentuated that time. Some relations between those events were noticed after Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. The idea about “27 club” was quickly spread in the public perception. Cobain’s mother, Wendy Fradenburg Cobain O’Connor, in her interview for one newspaper said: “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.”

A new wave of interest to this club rose in summer of 2011, when a 27 year- old retro-soul singer Amy Winehouse died. Just 2 months before her 28th birthday. Among the pre-released versions of her death causes there are drugs overdose ( though the police found no drugs in Amy’s house) and suicide. It’s also known that she suffered from emphysema – a long-term, progressive disease of the lungs.

Later Winehouse’s father suggested that she could die from a heart attack caused by alcohol intoxication. Fans and celebrities all around the world responded to the sudden death quite quickly. Several popular musicians such as Bono, Lily Allen, Jessie J., and Boy George dedicated their songs to Amy during their concerts.

Going back to this club, one may conclude that the “27 club” is based on myth, but anyway the risk of death for the musicians between 20 and 30 is still very high. They’d rather work hard on being alive as we still need good music, though it sounds lordly enough.